New Maplenoll Ariadne owner needing advice

Update on my tweaks to my Maplenoll. I have installed the zlift, graphite armtube and new headshell. I have decided to go up a couple of sizes with the silver wire because of difficulty with the O.OO3 wire. I will use 0.008 which is still much lighter than the existing wire used on the stock maplenoll arm. My fingers are just not nimble enough!:) I am currently using the wire from the old arm so I have gotten a chance to test fire the setup. The arm is much lighter so I had to remove one of the counterweights to get the system balanced. Now the exciting thing is with the zlift, I can do on the fly VTA adjustment which has allowed me to fine tune my vta while actually listening to a record. The movement of the adjustment is very smooth so there is no skipping or bouncing of the stylus while adjusting the height. The Zlift is a very ridgid and no free play at all. The lift is securely fastened to the plinth and the air bearing spindle is attached to the lift. The results are impressive. When you can hear changes while making the move, its much easier to find the sweet spot. The results with the carbon fiber arm and optimized vta are a stronger/solid bass response, wider soundstage and more clarity. WHat I mean by better clarity is that some albums I had some distortion or muddled sounds particurily with female vocals (stevie nicks on Rumours album as an example). That distortion is gone.

All in all, I think the modifications have improved the table in particular the stiffness of the arm assembly and the ability to easily adjust VTA.

I still have to install my damping trough and I am going to go directly from the arm wiring to my phono stage to see what improvement less cables will provide. I have included 1 pic on my system profile and will try to get some better pics up soon

Congratulations! sounds very cool. I'd love to see a good picture of the Z lift arrangement.

.008 is quite thick and may have adverse effects on tone arm movement. The wire I use is much thinner than even .003. It is a pain to work with but worth it.

Oilman: Kudo's to you . The tonearm does appear impressive and most certianly is a significant improvement over the stock model. Unfortunately, I'm a little fuzzy on the mechanics based on the pic's. I would appreciate a few more pics and close-ups whenever you have the time. Congratulations on your accomplishment.

My digital camera is on the fritz so I took the pics with my camera phone. I will get some hi quality pics on my system soon and for those interested, will send close up pics and material lists to assist if you want to perform a similar tweak. I am still trying to handle the small diameter wire based on Piedpipers comments. The arm assembly is more stable with the clamp arrangement and I think that is part of the increased bass response and depth to the soundstage. I also think the high purity silver wire will also improve the sound but still working on that one.

Oilman: How is the Tonearm ?